Sonata
by katydidit
Summary: John hears Sherlock's violin playing downstairs and, unlike all the times this has happened before, he knows that it's real. Sherlock's just downstairs, playing his violin like he never left. Takes place after Reichenbach and after Sherlock's return.


It took John a minutes, sleep-befuddled as he was, to realize that the haunting sound of the violin was not just a dream. Surely no one could blame him for it—he'd spent three years on his own and was only just getting used to having a flatmate again. It was still strange.

The first night that Sherlock had spent back in the flat, he'd apparently been unable to sleep. The sounds of someone moving around in the flat below John's room had woken him up, and he'd crept downstairs with his gun. He'd only just managed not to blow Sherlock's head off, and it had taken his heart the better part of an hour to stop racing.

Tonight, he did not reach for his gun. Instead, he stayed there in bed for a while, staring at the ceiling in the dark. The melody was unfamiliar, and not just in that "haven't heard him play in years" way. He had never heard this song before, which probably meant that it was one of Sherlock's own compositions. He hadn't taken his violin with him—obviously—and John couldn't help but wonder if he'd gone out and bought a new one or if he'd composed all these songs in his head alone. It was probably the latter. He wouldn't have wanted to draw attention to himself by purchasing or playing such an instrument, and he was certainly more than capable of composing without an actual violin.

The strings cried out in the night and while John had never been all that good at picking out the "stories" that classical music told, this one might as well have had lyrics. It was slow and mournful, practically hesitant, building into a crescendo of notes, a frenzied whirling mess culminating in a series of plucked strings. Then it was slow again. This was the Fall.

Just listening to it made John ache with the remembered loneliness of the first awful days alone. He'd held out hope for a few months, insisting that Sherlock was still alive and somewhere, but as time went by and the tall men in long swishy coats all turned out to be not-Sherlocks, John began to accept it. He never really had any other choice. Sherlock himself had seen to that.

John swung his feet over the edge of his bed and padded over to the stairwell for a better listen. The song was changing now, to something dark and dangerous, with that every-present ache just under the notes. This was Sherlock's side of the story, the days that he spent alone, John realized, and it chilled him. Sherlock had not volunteered much information about what he'd been doing during the years they'd spent apart, and John wouldn't ask. The violin spoke for the both of them. There was murder, guilt...so much blood. He closed his eyes against the sound, but it could not be denied.

He felt like an intruder, but he couldn't just go back to sleep. The music carried him down the stairs, and he hovered in the doorway to the sitting room.

Sherlock had his back to him, and seemed to be looking out the window as he played, but John knew better. It was in the way he squared his shoulders just a bit, not to mention the way the song trailed off into a gentle lullaby. John smiled, mostly to himself.

"You didn't wake me." Or, if he did, he didn't mind. English was less precise than the violin.

Regardless, Sherlock did not immediately resume playing. He seemed to droop ever so slightly as the two of them stood there in the room together, and John remembered some of their early arguments, from years ago when they'd first moved in together. There were several nights when John had tried to take advantage of their lack of a case and go to bed early for work the next day, only to be awakened a few hours later by Sherlock's violin. He went down to the sitting room each time and asked with mounting exasperation that he get one night—just one night a week—where Sherlock let him have a full eight hours of sleep. Surely that wasn't too much to ask?

Sometimes he'd gotten it.

Most times he hadn't.

And the nights after the Fall, when John found himself clenching his eyes and ears shut against the hallucinated music from the sitting room below him had made him realize that long nights of uninterrupted silence were overrated.

"Will you play something?" It was odd, how strange a request that seemed. It was almost intimate, which of course was ridiculous. It was just a musical instrument. John cleared his throat quietly in the silence that loomed between them. "I liked what you were playing earlier. It was..." To call it 'good' seemed wrong, knowing what it spoke of, but what else was there. "I liked it. It's one of yours, isn't it?"

Sherlock nodded, unless he was simply repositioning his violin against his neck, and turned to face the window again. He was changed. They were all changed, of course—one could hardly expect them to stay the same through all that they'd faced—but John didn't like it. Sherlock's silences were no more or less frequent than they had been before, but they seemed heavier. Sadder. As Sherlock drew the bow across the strings once more, the notes seemed to hover in the air. John's sense of intruding slipped away. Instead, the music surrounded the two of them, not so much in their own world or anything so silly, but perhaps in a part of the world currently reserved only for them.

John watched Sherlock play—watched his body move with the music, watched his eyes slipped closed in the reflection in the window—and driven by something beyond comprehension, he stepped closer and closer. Finally, he did something he had meant to do the night that Sherlock revealed himself, though he had been interrupted by several fractured bones in his hand as well as a rather large gash on Sherlock's cheekbone that required immediate care: he placed his arms around Sherlock's waist from behind (careful, of course, not to jostle his arms and disrupt his playing) and pressed his face against the bony expanse of his back.

Obviously this was not something that the two of them did often. Hell, John didn't usually embrace many people at all, let alone his standoffish, potentially-mildly-sociopathic friend. But, he reasoned with himself even as he took note of the feel of the silk against his cheek, Sherlock owed him this much, at least. He could submit to one hug, one hug for the three years of mutual loneliness and desperation, and maybe they could pretend to be even for a while.

John felt Sherlock go still and tried not to hold him just a little bit tighter. He didn't want to let go yet. In the light of day, this would feel exceedingly strange, but here in the in-between, when it was neither night nor day, it was excusable. Just as long as Sherlock didn't put an end to it.

He could feel him moving, bending just a bit to gently place his violin and bow down on the desk, and then he was turning around in the circle of John's arms. He was not reaching down to take hold of John's wrists to separate the two bodies, which was a good sign. He was merely turning around. There was only a moment of hesitation before Sherlock's arms were sliding around John's shoulders, first wary and then clutching at his shoulder blades to drag him closer. John's face was tucked against Sherlock's shoulder, and he could feel a pointed chin pressing against the top of his head. A low baritone rumbled through Sherlock's throat, a name, an explanation, a bit of nonsense, but John didn't catch it. He was too busy soaking up the pure uncomplicated warmth coming from his friend.

In the morning there would be too much to analyze, too much to think about and question, but right now, in the air still ringing with the remembered sounds of Sherlock's private concert, this was all that mattered.


End file.
